What do you think would make a big change in the world?

That would serve two purposes… help clean up the environment, and loosen the hold that the friggin Middle East has over the US.

i thought it was the u.s that held the m.e.

They can charge practically whatever they want for oil because they’re the biggest supplier.

oh, damn then i must be stupid :\

a world less dependent on fossil fuels.

I think the biggest change would be peace. If there was peace, huge amounts of money would be freed up that could go for innovation in many fields including energy.

Aliens. Really, and they should be nefarious. Then we can all unite as a human population against a common enemy. :)

nooooo, weee come in peeeace. (imitating aliens)

Teaching children to have a wider world view would go a long way toward a better future for us all. Respect others rights, and don’t let your beliefs impinge on those rights.

I agree with augustlan. Teaching children, from the very beginning, that there are other people in the world who live much differently than they do. Specifically, making elementary school aged American children aware of what is going on in the world. It took me until my freshman year of college, for the most part, to realize that there were things going on around the world that were horrible, but that I can play a part in rectifying. I firmly believe that fifth graders must be taught about the things going on in Zimbabwe, Northern Uganda, and Darfur right now. If they’re made aware from a very early age that some people don’t have the luxury of human rights, they’re more apt to want to change the world in which they live. Children need to be taught that they can absolutely have an effect on their world.

Enough bacon to feed everyone without having to kill little piggies! :)

Large Hadron Collider

As some have already said: Education. Specifically, teaching kids to be curious, to think outside the box, to think clearly, and to be not only informed but compassionate. Clean energy would be great, but that and similar innovations can only come about as a result of education.

The return of “Nickel Beer”.....

Teach that religion / spirituality is something to be used for personal reasons rather than something you join.

hey!!! i’m part of a spiritual religion.

- Make illegal the contributions by the medical/auto/energy industries (all forms, including oil & solar too) to anyone working in Congress, the Senate, Courts, & the White House, regardless of their position, from the big wigs to their aids. Then…

- Make into law that all car makers selling cars in America must make X % of electrical cars available by X date, then bigger % by X date, increasing the percentage with a goal of 100% by the end of X date. As some productivity speakers often say, a goal without a due-date is just a dream. See Who killed the electric car? for some reasons.

- Make HMO’s illegal. Have the government handle this function as it does the military. We ‘socialized’ already countrywide the Police, the Fire Dept., and our Libraries among others, so lets face the fact that calling medicine socialized does not make it anti-American. Just ask Canada for the S.O.P. and modify it as you go along (ready, FIRE! aim), and stop wasting time!!! Visit Mike Moore’s site for more info

- Make cigarettes a prescription-based drug, available only to legal adults at the time the law goes into effect. If you are younger, you can’t get a prescription, even when you reach the legal-adult age. Sure, some people will use other people’s smokes, but within one generation we’ll be done with this killer. Oh, and no advertising allowed at all.

Discovering and manipulating the Higgs Boson. Then, theoretically, FTL travel would be possible, or travel at light speed anyway. No mass means no inertia as well, so no dampening would be needed and the speed that could be withstood would be, again theoretically, infinite.

getting rid of terrorism,not relying on fossil fuels,curing cancer and legalising cannabis would make anice start

Send all refugees and illegal immigrants back to their Country of Origin.

Great idea oasis. All the natives could have their land back. Send all the whiteys back to Europe.

So you’re view differs,why be facetious.
A racist comment as well,do you have something against white people.
All illegals and refugees is the post.Now use your obvious intellect and read it again.
Then apologize for casting aspersions.

I hate white people: my wife, my mom, my grandparents…shall I go on. And I can’t be racist against the ruling majority—prejudiced yes, racist no.

Racism cuts both ways.

I believe what tinyfaery meant was that the colonists who arrived on the shores of what is now called America were refugees from their own land. Even the Native people migrated here from other parts of the world. If we sent all the refugees and immigrants back to their country of origin, there would be no-one left. Furthermore, if all the illegal immigrants left the country, the economy would collapse almost overnight.

Also, @Tinyfaery “Racism, by its simplest definition, is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”

“The word prejudice refers to prejudgment: making a decision before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case or event.”

(Definitions are from Wikipedia, the love of my life)

Thus, you can indeed be racist against the ruling majority if you believe that a race which is not the ruling majority is inherently superior to the one that is. The ruling majority can, of course, also be racist. You can also be racially prejudiced if you make judgements about a person based on their race – whether they are white or black doesn’t matter. The important point is whether or not you are using their race as the primary determinant in your thinking.

Oh. I’m just going on 7 years of gender/race studies at UCLA.

Fair enough. Do you think the definitions are incorrect, then?

From what I gathered from my studies, racism is a unique dynamic between a ruling majority and the population of minorities within that realm of power; afterall, racism is about power. How can a black man with no access to the privileges of white America be racist against the white majority; the black man has no authoritative power, thus no racism. But, the same black man can have pre-judgements about whites as a race and as individuals.

Of course I am speaking of the US and most western nations. And I want to point out that in certain areas of the country, like Miami for instance, a nationwide minority (Cubans) can and do have a lot of localized power. So, as far as this minority has power over a nationwide majority (whites), I’d say calling ideas of superiority in this case can be construed as racism.

iPhone disclaimer: I can’t see what I wrote.

Well, according to the above definition, a black man can be racist against a white majority if he believes that simply by virtue of being black, he is superior to whites. I don’t think that only those in power can be racist, but it is often a tool used by those in power to suppress those who are not, and it often shows up in its nastiest forms in places where uneven power dynamics between races exist.

Huh? You contradicted yourself? But, anyway, I don’t want to debate.

When did I contradict myself? I said that a member of a race who that isn’t in power can be racist, but those in power are more likely to be, since racism is often used as a tool to suppress those who are not. If you don’t want to debate, though, that’s fine.

@GREEN40 — Yeah, what you said. Just legalizing cannabis would make a huge change. It doesn’t kill your liver or destroy brain cells, like alcohol; it helps prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia; it reduces intraocular and blood pressure; and it makes people a hell of a lot more tolerant. Farmers in the Midwest Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and East Texas — and in many other parts of the world, notably the tropics — wouldn’t be poor anymore if they could grow and sell this cash crop legally. If sales were taxed, America could probably clear up its budget deficit in a year or two.

Getting rid of television would also change things radically. Without TV we wouldn’t have commercials or Barney. Or rude cartoon characters who make kids think “Whatever” is a suitable response and that rudeness is how you get popular. Or CNN’s Robin Meade or Kiran Chetry — two ladies who apparently got their jobs based on their sex appeal, because they damn sure aren’t journalists — or a broadcast media that apparently says whatever TPTB wants it to, whether it’s true or not. Without all the “experts” prophesying doom and gloom 24/7 since about last September, we probably would still be out there spending, and the economy might be a hell of a lot better off.

And of course if we brought Edward R. Murrow back to life the world would be much better off. We would be there.

I think Cannabis will be legalized once the current generation gets into power. Right now, there’s a big stigma against it among the older generation, but nearly all of today’s youth have tried it at least once. I don’t think it would instantly solve as many problems as you say – legalizing a product usually lowers its price, for example (which would mean that those farmers would make less money off it.

Getting rid of TV would certainly be a radical change, but I don’t it would be for the better. Without commercials, companies would just find other ways of advertising their products. Granted, you’d get rid of Bill O’Reilly and the cornucopia of awful reality TV shows, but you’d lose Rome, Deadwood, Weeds, Rugrats, The Simpsons, Dave Chapelle, Firefly, Bugs Bunny, Futurama, etc. etc. Also, I must say that I think bad parenting has far more to do with a given child’s lack of respect than “rude cartoon characters”.

Also, though this is an entirely separate discussion, I feel I must point out that very few people (who anyone listened to) predicted the economic crisis, and that its causes are far more complex than simple lack of confidence.

Anyway, the point is that you can’t judge an entire medium based on a few bad apples. There are bad books, bad comics, and bad radio, and though TV is particularly pervasive and ingrained in our popular culture, the fact that it can reach such a large audience can, in many cases, be a wonderful thing.

@Hobbes—I’m not judging. I just think taking away TV would make a HUGE change in the world. Wasn’t that the Q? <Looks> Yep.

Gotta say, our opinions of what TV shows are gems differ vastly.

And I didn’t realize that a big stigma existed against hemp among the Baby Boomers. Weren’t we the ones who did Woodstock and Height-Ashbury? “Turn on, tune in, drop out”?

Oh, I know! — what would make the whole world completely different? Strike us all illiterate overnight.

Well, it seemed to me that the question implied that the change would be for the better. After all, a nuclear holocaust would be a pretty big change, too.

What TV shows do you consider gems? On what basis do you not care for the ones I listed? Note that I’m not trying to start an argument over whose shows are better, I’m just curious.

Hmm. You have a point there. I wonder why such a big stigma exists, then?

We come from different generations, @Hobbes. I don’t like what I consider vulgarity. Of all the ones you listed, Bugs Bunny is the only show we both like. I loved “Pinky & the Brain,” too.

I do think that instant illiteracy would probably be a good thing over all. We’d be burning Q’rans and Bibles for warmth; keyboards would suddenly be a nice wedge when you need a big shim; TelePrompTers would no longer help witless fools seem wise; and no written law or tax codes would exist to be “deciphered” by the same experts who wrote them.

While I have your attention, I’d like to recommend highly “The Goddess Versus the Alphabet,” by Dr. Leonard M. Shlain. He discusses how much the world changed when letters and numbers were invented — what a change they made in the evolution of our brains. (He’s a brain surgeon who can hella write!) And he does it while tracing our mythos and civilizations, or lack thereof, from earliest to latest.

All thumbs up.

Haha. I’ll second you on “Pinky and the Brain”. I agree with you on vulgarity, but only when it’s useless vulgarity. Deadwood, for example, has more swearwords per hour than I can count, but they’re included because the speech of the average person in a boom town during the California gold rush really would have been that vulgar. Similarly, I don’t think that sex and violence should be plopped into a show just for shock value (at least if you’re intending to make anything more sophisticated than a Grindhouse flick), but I don’t think they should be glossed over for modesty’s sake either. Sex, violence, and vulgarity exist in the world, and it seems to me that they’re just as valid subject matter as anything else.

Are you actually advocating mass illiteracy? I mean, yes, it might have a few positive implications, but all of civilization would collapse almost overnight. Plus, what would I do with the shelves and shelves of books I own? Not to mention, Fluther would disappear!

And that would be bad because… ?

I mean, yeah, I enjoy consuming time here, too. But what good are we doing, gazing at each other’s navels?

Think about nobody being able to read. No priests, no lawyers, no congress critters. Think about it. Would that be a humongous change, or what?!

People say peace so money can be spent on everyone.
Well i say if currency did not exsist and mankind would help for the sake of helping.
but without personal gain man doesnt function.

Put women in charge and it’ll be a very different world

If volcanoes erupted in every major city, but instead of lava coming out DINOSAURS did! (but somehow they learned to tolerate the oxygen content differences and lower temperatures) And the dinosaurs conquered Albania and made it their own country and became the dominant force in international relations.
But then the dinosaurs ate Bill Clinton.

That would be a big change in the world.

…..But then the dinosaurs ate Bill Clinton.

Would they (the Dino’s) eat AGore too?
And Nancy
Barbara
Diane
...

Just Bill Clinton, he was the ONLY human they ate

The liberal mentality just dries up and floats away.

giant meteor. epic style.

@anarekist That’s what I was going to say!

A plague, maybe. Or the Iranians might flip their collective lid and EMP the Internet. It would be like Goldeneye, only Boris would be played by Amadinejad and James Bond wouldn’t quite make it in time.

Female leadership, I’m not a femanist however I cannot see women initiating a nuculear war, also they’re more nuturing so they care more for humanity, thus I’m sure poverty would be higher on the priority list rather than sending troops to Iraq. I think female leadership would certainly change the world we live in, in a positive way. It wouldn’t be perfect but it would sure cease a huge amount of the violence, racisim, and poverty, which is what our biggest downfalls are at the moment.

Reducing the number of people on the planet to less than 500 million. Because people are the main cause of so many of our problems! Having more sure won’t help…